Remembering Dyna Blaster, the first Battle Royale game I played
Last Bomberman standing.
26 years on, the opening ditty to Dyna Blaster on the Amiga is still seared into my memory, a perfect, personal time capsule that exists nowhere else but my brain. I only need to hum the first 10 seconds of that jingle and suddenly I'm transported back in time to 1991. 12 years old and huddled around an Amiga 500+ with four of my friends in a tiny bedroom in Garsington, Oxford.
VideoBomberman Live - first 15 mins
Worth a blast?
Worth a blast?
How to put Avatars in old XBLA games
Microsoft explains the update process.
Avatars arrive with the new Xbox 360 front-end today, and Microsoft has explained how to add them to older Xbox Live Arcade games that support them.
XBLA games to feature avatars soon
Four current titles, one new one.
Four existing Xbox Live Arcade games and one new one are set to incorporate Avatars when the New Xbox Experience launches on November 19th.
Live Arcade Awards reveals winners
As voted for by you.
Microsoft has released the list of winners for its inaugural Xbox Live Awards.
For XBLA game.
Hudson and Microsoft are keeping someone in the office over Christmas to push a big red button marked "Bomb-Up Pack 3", which is to say that there will be some downloadable content for Bomberman Live released on Boxing Day.
Nips and tucks.
Hudson has whipped a new title update for Bomberman onto Live, fixing lots of niggling bits and pieces.
You can preview game rules from the lobby before you start, for instance, and there is less waiting between matches - 20 seconds if you're asking. Those of you with more than six figures in your scores should now have it displayed properly in the leaderboards, too, and if you win a bout you will have your Gamertag show up instead of a Bomberman head and you can brag for a full minute.
Changing between costumes from Bomb-Up Packs 1 and 2 should now save properly, and kicking bombs into each other should result more often in dangerous bombs. Finally Scavenger can now be turned on for the Plunder Isle map, and there should be less power-up lag when playing online.
Fresh faces and places.
Hudson has blown up plans for new Bomberman Live! content, which will be available next Wednesday for 250 points (GBP 2.13 / EUR 3).
Forever.
If one game makes absolute perfect sense on Xbox Live Arcade it's Bomberman. Taking the age old concept of blowing the bejesus out of one another in a series of top-down arenas, and then expanding that to an online-focused game could well make it one of the most essential titles to go ahead and download.
If you've somehow managed to miss the dozens of previous Bomberman releases down the years, then here's the deal. You're one of up to eight players in a single screen-sized maze like arena, and the end game is to be the last man standing by using your bombs to blast them to kingdom come. It's simple, but hugely, life-sappingly addictive. Truly, it's one of those easy-to-learn, hard-to-master games that always has been and always will be a classic.
Still don't get it? Ok. Initially you're enclosed by destructible blocks, and some that resist explosions, but quickly you'll be able to not only gain access to a larger portion of the arena, but start to accumulate power-ups. Most commonly these will be speed-ups or flame extenders that ensure that the blast radius of your bombs increases (and thereby increasing your chances of killing an opponent).
Two games out on Wednesday.
Bomberman Live and Yie Ar Kung Fu will be this Wednesday, 18th July's Xbox Live Arcade releases, Microsoft said late on Friday while we were busy sneezing somewhere over the Atlantic, wondering how exactly we'd managed to catch a cold in Los sodding Angeles.
Exploading this summer.
Hudson has finally given in to our child-like pining and revealed that Bomberman will be revamped for Xbox Live this summer.
